Part III: Chapter 17 Sports Summary

Sports writers sometimes forget what they are writing about and who their readers are. The writers fall into bad habits, such as trying to use terms other than the standards when describing what an athlete does. Some writers try to be psychoanalysts or other things that they are not, and the results are usually uninteresting. This is because the readers have likely played the sport themselves and want to know what happened from that perspective. Or the readers admire the athletes and want to know something about their perspectives on the sport, not necessarily about their lives in general. The readers are not interested in the writer's opinions about irrelevant subjects. The author warns about being too critical of athletes. They deserve respect because what they do is difficult, and most people cannot perform as well.